Page 59

“Excuse me,” someone said. The window seat person had arrived. Shira stood, using that as an excuse to put her phone on airplane mode and stick it in her pocket. She would text Leo later.

Only she didn’t. Her dad picked her up and presented her with a bouquet of colorful dyed daisies he’d clearly purchased from the grocery store. “Aw,” she said, clutching the flowers to her chest. They smelled like plastic. “Best Uber driver ever.”

“Welcome back to the East Coast,” he said, gesturing her inside with a flourish and then closing her door gently behind her. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” Shira said, and watched the lights of the airport recede behind her. She had to text Leo eventually because he had to come to the Hanukkah party this year. He had to. There was no other option.

It was just kind of hard to express that type of urgency in a text without making the other person want to run the opposite way. But she would figure out the best method to say Your attendance at this party is mandatory, and she would text it to him. Soon. Very soon.

Only she didn’t. She kept putting it off. Because what if she texted him and things stayed weird and awkward? What if he didn’t listen to her when she tried to tell him how important it was that he listen to her, the same way Danica hadn’t? Maybe she’d done all the work changing herself and growing and maturing, and it still wouldn’t be enough. It could be fun when an old friend couldn’t see you as anything but your old self, but it could also be hard and sucky not to be able to move beyond that previous version of who you were.

“You can’t expect a relationship to fix you,” said Talia frankly at the dollar store where they were trawling for Hanukkah decorations. Shira rolled her eyes. Her little sister had gotten irritatingly wise since she and Anjali had moved in together. “You have to fix yourself.”

“I already fixed myself,” Shira said. “He just couldn’t see it.”

“It’s been a year,” said Talia. She stood on her tiptoes and pulled a glittery blue-and-silver tinsel garland from a top shelf. The benefits of being tall. “Maybe he can see it now. Especially now that you’re moving back to the area.”

Shira still couldn’t quite believe it. It was scary, honestly. She’d gone to college in New York City and then had moved right to Los Angeles. Lived there for her entire adult postcollege life. Built her identity in an environment of sunshine and traffic and green-juice places.

It was freeing, though, the thought of starting over new. Not entirely new—her synagogue had connected her to another synagogue here, and they’d helped her find a job, too. So she’d be meeting people and hopefully making friends who were already vouched for. She’d actually planned at first to go back to New York, before crunching the numbers and realizing that she’d probably have to get roommates. Roommates were great in college, but after years of living alone, there was no way she was going back.

And Philly was nice. Good food. Not too far from her family. Culture. A much lower cost of living.

“I want to show him my new paintings,” Shira said. The paintings of the memory candles that…well. That had so much to do with him. “No, I have to show him my new paintings.”

“So show him your paintings.” Talia made it sound so easy.

“You’re a genius,” Shira said, deadpan, but her mind was racing. She used to create art galleries out of their hallways…and over there were plenty of art supplies that had to do with Hanukkah. Stickers. Stencils. She might have been a professional artist, but she was a sucker for a stencil. There was something sweet and childlike about them, and she could always dress them up.

“Obviously,” said Talia.

Shira gathered a bunch of the Hanukkah art supplies in her arms, then leaned in to give her sister an impromptu hug. Leaned back. Smiled. “You know you have a dreidel sticker on your forehead.”

“I know,” Talia said without missing a beat. “It’s a sign from above that I’m the messiah.”

Shira nearly choked on air. “Can’t you get kicked out of rabbinical school for that?”

Talia grinned. “Not without offending the messiah. Hey, is that a female Hanukkah Harry?”

God, Shira hoped so.

23

Every so often, Leo took out his phone and scrolled down in his messages app until he hit his last conversation with Shira. They hadn’t communicated in months, and then she’d texted to wish him a happy birthday. Nothing elaborate, no inside jokes, no regular jokes. Just two words and an exclamation point, the same exact message he used to get before he deleted social media from old middle school friends he hadn’t talked to in years and distant cousins he still wasn’t entirely sure how he was related to.

So he’d responded the same way he’d always responded to them, the people who would have no idea it was his birthday if the site hadn’t alerted them. Thanks! One word, one exclamation point, too impersonal. She hadn’t responded to that, not even to like the message. It was hard to think how to follow that up, so he hadn’t. And now it had been months, and it seemed too weird to come out of nowhere and be like, Hey, you having a Hanukkah party this year? Can I invite myself?

“Whatcha doing?” His mom suddenly loomed over where he was stretched out on his couch. He jumped. For an old lady, she moved with supernatural silence and speed. Then again, she was so deeply tanned and had done such a skillful job dyeing her grays brown that she easily looked ten years younger than she was, so it wasn’t so surprising she moved that way.

Leo grimaced, tucking his phone into his pocket and hopping to his feet, nearly bumping into his mom. “Nothing. Looking up what to get for lunch. Directions. Are you hungry?”

She fixed him with a beady stare. It had probably been too much to hope that would work. “Were you on one of those dating apps? Can I help you? I know what you should be looking for in a woman.”

There was nothing he’d like less than having his mother pick out his future mate. Ugh, that sounded gross. Then again…arranged marriages had worked for years around the world. Maybe he should let her give it a try.

Though that would involve joining one of the apps again. He’d deleted them all after he’d met Emily and hadn’t been able to bring himself to join back up.

As if contributing to the conversation, Neptune nudged Leo’s dangling hand with his wet nose. “We should probably actually take the dog for a walk,” Leo said. “You want to come?”